A new simple optical system based on optical beam deflection combining the holophote corner cube was developed in order to study the dynamics of laser-induced shock waves in air. In this method, we adopt a He–Ne laser beam as the detection beam. The He–Ne laser beam, reflected by corner cube, intersects the propagating shock wave at two successive positions. The measurement of the shock wave velocity benefits from the double peak signals induced by the same acting laser pulse, which is calculated from the time interval between the corresponding oscilloscope signals and the distance of the two He–Ne laser beams. By virtue of this setup, we are also able to determine the pressure of the generated shock waves. It is shown that this method is simple with a fairly good precision and is much easier than the conventional methods used for this task.